Joy causeth a cheerfulness and vigour in the eyes; singing, leaping, dancing, and sometimes tears: all these are the effects of the dilatation and coming forth of the spirits into the outward parts.
The coming into a fair garden, the coming into a fair room richly furnished, a beautiful person, and the like, do delight and exhilarate the spirits much.
Methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears; and the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrance of heaven.
To these we have the examples of the Roman lady who died for joy to see her son safe returned from the defeat of Cannæ; and of Sophocles, and Dionysius the tyrant, who died of joy; and of Talva, who died in Corsica, reading news of the honours the Roman senate had decreed in his favour. We have moreover one, in the time of Pope Leo the tenth, who upon news of the taking of Milan, a thing he had so ardently and passionately desird, was rapt with so sudden an excess of joy that he immediately fell into a fever and died.
Michel de Montaigne: Essays, Cottons 3d ed., ch. ii.
True joy is a serene and sober motion; and they are miserably out that take laughing for rejoicing: the seat of it is within, and there is no cheerfulness like the resolutions of a brave mind, that has fortune under its feet.
The lightsome passion of joy was not that which now often usurps the name; that trivial, vanishing, superficial thing that only gilds the apprehensions, and plays upon the surface of the soul.